By making this woman feel threatened and afraid for her life, I am guilty of assault and battery. By entering the premises without permission, I have committed burglary. By causing a general disruption that significantly impacts someone’s life as well as the lives of their loved ones and which has led to this day in court, I am guilty of disorderly conduct. By inflicting harm on this woman, by nature of my presence, I am guilty of domestic violence. By insisting that my presence be made known, by not going away when asked and by interfering with the safety of this woman, I am guilty of harassment. Once the camera is on me, and as I am sitting here naked, I will soon be guilty of indecent exposure. By the time this is all over, since my presence will have disturbed the general perception that everyone has of this case, I will also be guilty of contempt of court. -Fetus Pro Se

If I say that this quote is allegedly the statement of a fetus, you’d probably call me out as saying something absurd, right? At least, I would hope that you would. It is absurd. The idea that a fetus could ever have the capacity to understand and utter such things is absolute nonsense. Fetuses don’t know anything!

When the news that a fetus would be present in court, the Internet, of course, responded with mockery. Were it the case that the fetus were to articulate some sort of testimony in its defense, I’m sure that mockery would have been justified. That isn’t what is happening here, though. Instead, the fetus pro se is actually not pro se (as in, it isn’t testifying on behalf of itself). The fetus is there so that it may be displayed in court as having a heartbeat.

Of course, this move seems clever on the part of the pro-life crowd, but just because something is a clever stunt does not mean we can just dismiss it as invalid. Since the question on this case is if a fetal heartbeat is enough to grant a fetus rights. It does make some sense, then, to demonstrate something to the court as to why that would be. Enter: Fetus.

Court cases serve an important function, for us, and while this case is offensive and horrible because it is a proposal to steal away our rights, we still have to let the judicial process happen and that means that if the other side makes their case by putting a pregnant woman on display, than so be it. Let the fetus trial begin!

It isn’t as if there aren’t many, many ways to argue against such a display. If you want to follow the same route as theirs, someone could certainly produce evidence of parasites which pulse and move in the human body. It would be easy to point out that, while a fetus has a heartbeat early on, that doesn’t mean that the fetus isn’t somehow causing harm by existing where it may be unwanted. Regardless of if some pro-life group is doing this in seriousness or is trying to slip in some complicated emotional appeal in their case, we have to let it happen and ridiculing it and pretending it is something that it is not (a fetus taking the stand) is only entertaining the desire by pro-lifers to assign a personal connotation to the fetus, instead of approaching the matter with some level of maturity and logic. If we have a case in court about heartbeats, let them present a heartbeat.